He was groping for a quick answer. Something that sounded respectable. Derek’s cousin had just given birth to her first child. And the kid’s name, he decided, would be perfect. “Calliope, maybe?”

“Okay. That’s not bad.”

It even gave him a chance to show off a little. “It’s Greek origin. It means ‘beautiful voice.’ ”

Then, as he was about to speak to the reporters, the waterfall faded and the music went silent.

It didn’t come back. “Don’t know what happened, Derek,” the woman at the control unit told him. “If it was actually coming in from the target area, we should have been able to stay locked on to it. Best guess is that the source shut it down.”

“Do we have any vehicles out in that general direction? Anybody who might have sent the signal?”

“We’re checking on it. But there aren’t any I know of.”

“We recorded that thing, right?”

“Oh yes. We have the entire transmission.”

As a precaution, Derek directed the AI to run the waterfall against every known cataract on Earth. There was no match.

He reran the transmission several times. There was vegetation around the edges. Ben could find nothing of a terrestrial origin to match it. A substantial number of the attendees stayed while they searched, and all were excited by the results. They were, in fact, delighted.

And finally, it was time for lunch. Ordinarily, Derek would have picked up a snack at one of the vending machines on the first floor and returned to his office. He didn’t socialize much. But this time, he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. “Have you eaten yet, Linda?” he asked.

They went across the campus to the college cafeteria. Rain was still falling, but it wasn’t much more than a drizzle now. They got in line, collected some food and Diet Cokes, and sat down at a table where everyone nearby seemed to be caught up in animated conversations. About Calliope. The aliens like the same kind of music we do. It was a good sign. Derek loved seeing students get excited about science. Even if this was a bit wild. And, of course, the fact that they’d been present at what everyone recognized as a historic occasion didn’t hurt. He signaled that he needed catsup for his meatloaf, and Linda passed the bottle over. Then she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I guess it wasn’t such a good idea to bring everybody in.”